I was thinking about turtles, of all things, as I was driving through Muskegon Township on my way recently to a barroom wake for a great friend, outdoorsman and colleague.

There, along a two-mile stretch of U.S. 31 runs the unique turtle fence that had caused such an outcry back in 2007-08. You can’t miss the fence because it’s unique not only to West Michigan, but to the country.

“Waste of money!” “Ridiculous!” “Idiotic!” were the kindest of the many epithets thrown at the fence project by these blowhards, who begrudged the $318,000 of federal highway money (and the jobs created by its expenditure) to save wandering turtles from being smashed on the highway.

Naturally, I was rooting for the turtles in that squabble.

Liberals like myself are always rooting for the underdog and the downtrodden, a word that in connection with creatures as lowly as the turtle is no exaggeration.

These inoffensive animals, little changed in appearance and behavior since the days of the dinosaurs, have been stomped, squashed and flattened to the point where the very existence of some of their species has been threatened with extinction.

The trouble has been most acute at the intersection of where turtle meets mankind, on the asphalt and concrete of U.S. 31 in Muskegon Township, where also flows the delta of the mighty Muskegon River.

There, an ideal turtle habitat was formed in which our slow-crawling, underdog friends thrived in Muskegon County in an ecological setting where the grasses of the Great Plains once met the deciduous forests of the Appalachians and bumped into the coniferous and deciduous forests of the Great White North.

Ideal, that is, except for the highway that runs over their favorite nesting places, which pregnant turtle mommies are driven naturally to seek out. Worse for them, turtles over their 50-100-year life spans are capable of only laying a relatively few clutches of precious eggs.

Michigan Department of Natural Resources Senior Biologist Thomas M. Goniea explained that turtles need “just the right amount of shade and sun” in which to bury their eggs, which then fall victim to predators and weather. This extreme rarity of eggs hatching to adulthood even under ideal conditions compounds the problem of turtle mortality.

The alarming number of squashed turtles found along U.S. 31 prompted a scientific study to look into ways to inhibit a pattern of demise that has put at least four of Michigan’s 10 turtle species on the “threatened” list. Michigan State University Extension Zoologist Yu Man Lee and Richard Wolinski, the veteran ecologist and wetlands expert for the state, recommended the fence as the solution. Their research helped garner the funding to build it.

The results? Smashing.

Proof from data collected over a five-year period has shown the numbers of turtles crushed declining from the hundreds to virtually a handful. Better yet, flattened dead turtles belonging to threatened species can be counted on one hand nowadays, which is great news.

“The last thing you want is for a species to be on the federally endangered list,” said biologist Goniea. “That causes major headaches for homeowners and developers.”

Amazingly, the turtles and the scientists won this fight.

But it would be rubbing it in to specify what became of the chief opponent to the turtle fence, an elected official, except to say that his political plans were squished by voters.

So if you should happen upon a smiling turtle some day, you know why it’s laughing.

David Kolb is former editorial page editor of The Muskegon Chronicle. Email: writersgroupllc@gmail.com